Phase I Overview

Applications for time on Gemini are made through National Time
Allocation Committees (NTACs) which are individually responsible
for scientific and technical assessment and for making recommendations
to the Gemini Observatory that time be awarded. Proposals will be
solicited by Gemini every 6 months in early March and September;
details of the submission and review process vary from partner to
partner. Proposals for Large and Long Programs are accepted annually and assessed through a seperate LP Time Allocation Committee. Proposals for
Director's Discretionary Time can be submitted throughout the semester, and this time is open to
all astronomers, independent of nationality. Poor weather proposals can also be submitted throughout the semester, and this time is open to users based in partner countries, the host institutions and Gemini staff. International
collaborations ("joint proposals"), where time is being
sought from several partner countries, must be submitted using the
Gemini
Phase I Tool (PIT) even if the proposal involves partners that
offer other submission mechanisms. The PIT supports automatic
submission to multiple partners at once. See the joint proposal instructions
for more details.

Proposals from outside of the Gemini community must be submitted
through one of the NTACs.
Links to partner- and host-specific information are contained in the
following table. Gemini staff time is currently also available, at the Director's discretion.

Proposals for Korean time under the Limited-Term Partnership MoU. Not available for Joint Proposals.

In normal operations, application may be
made for classical or queue mode observations.
Successful queue and classical applications are defined in
advance using the
Phase II Observing Tool.
Classical mode observations are
scheduled on specific dates and are carried out by the investigators
visiting the telescopes. Queue
mode observations are
executed by the Gemini staff. This mode offers the
potential of better matching observations to the prevailing conditions
(e.g. image quality, sky background, cloud cover) and
execution of Target of Opportunity observations for
classes of targets whose coordinates are not known at the time of
proposal submission.
Gemini Observatory welcomes a variety of
visiting scientists,
including classical observers, queue investigators, students, and members of the National Gemini Offices.

The Phase I proposal submission process
is supported by staff in the National Gemini Offices (NGOs).
The Gemini Help Desk should be used to
contact NGO staff regarding proposal submission.
Technical instrument-specific advice is given
in the "Observation Preparation" section of each of the Gemini
instrument web pages.
The worst possible
weather conditions must be specified for each program. The Integration Time Calculators should be used to optimise your exposure time, conditions and signal to noise.

The NTAC results, comprising rank and
recommended time awards, are sent
electronically to Gemini Observatory.
Each proposal is sent as an XML document consisting of
attribute/value pairs that encode the proposal information together with a separate PDF file containing the science and technical case.
The Gemini Phase I Tool (PIT)
automatically generates the XML file. Partners who have chosen to use
their own proposal system must translate their
internal formats into the correct XML structures in order for the files to be ingested into the observing database.
The NTAC and Staff forwarded proposals are
merged together to produce
a draft program queue at each telescope. For
the merging to work effectively, the group of top-rated proposals that
would fill that
partners share of the time available should contain a reasonable
balance in terms of the
observing constraints requested. The
NTAC evaluations
page lists various considerations for maximising each partner's use of their allocated time.

The
International Time
Allocation Committee (ITAC)
consists of representatives from each NTAC and from Gemini
Observatory. The merged queue and list of classical programs are considered by the ITAC,
and duplications and conflicts are resolved. Observatory operations staff are consulted to ensure
that programs can be scheduled; changes may be made to individual programs for schedulability.
The recommended programs are forwarded to
the Gemini Director for final approval.
Approved programs are published on the Gemini public web pages,
including: PI name, partner country, proposal title
and abstract,
instrument.

Queue programs assigned by the ITAC into queue
Science
Ranking Band 1 are eligible for rollover into the next semester,
for no more
than two consecutive semesters, in order to increase the likelihood of
program
completion. Rollover will apply to queue
programs only, and not to Targets of Opportunity programs.
The relevant ITAC representatives have the right to recommend
withdrawal of
execution (and rollover) status.

Scientific and technical feedback to the investigators about their
proposal is
generated by each NGO/NTAC. Notification of the award of time is
generated by Gemini Observatory and sent to each
investigator.
NGOs then iterate with successful PI's to specify the
Phase II observations.
The formal handover of responsibility for supporting the
investigators,
from the NGO to Gemini Observatory, takes place upon transmission to
Gemini of the final detailed Phase II
program.